


Tattooed Heart

by dreforall



Series: Flesh Canvas [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Sansa-centric, Scars, Tattoos, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 15:09:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18672157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreforall/pseuds/dreforall
Summary: Sansa is a good girl. A polite, demure, feminine, gentle woman. A paragon of domestic bliss. Or at least, that's what she wants everyone else to think. Everyone, that is, except him.





	Tattooed Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask where this came from cuz I don't know either :p  
> Just a little tidbit I dreamed up. ~~Might continue, might not, who knows!~~ Officially part of a series now :D

“Are you sure, little bird?”

She smiles. She's learned to love the endearment, with time. Once it stopped feeling like an insult and she started to see the tenderness beneath it. But so much changed since those first days, it’s almost refreshing to hear it from his lips again.

“Positive, puppy,” she grins at his growl. It’s playful; somewhere between then and now, they’ve developed a rapport quite unlike what anyone else would expect. He hates the nickname, or so she says, but she knows he doesn't, not really.

People don’t expect much from Sansa, which is just the way she likes it.

She’s a good girl, Sansa Stark is. Beautiful, demure, a true lady. That has never changed. Her skirts are always modest, her décolletage always discreet, her back covered by a waterfall of fire-red hair. She always wears pastels and soft, feminine colours, so unlike her tattooed, pierced hellion-sister.

Appearances. She knows how important those are, since very, very early in her young life.

She's very good at this game.

Outside, Sansa Stark is the picture of modesty and grace. A paragon of feminine virtue and everything the most conservative of men wish in their life. Soft spoken, young, beautiful.

Between the hallowed walls of Sandor’s shop, however, she’s someone else altogether.

Lying on the table, on her stomach, her ankles crossed and pressed against her bum. Relaxed, so relaxed, even though her bra lies discarded elsewhere and she wears no shirt. Why should she? It’s nothing he’s not seen before, in Joffrey’s own mansion, as he beat and ripped the clothes from her body.

The needles feel strange against the tissue of her scars. She’s no stranger to pain, but it’s more odd than painful. Weird, really. The hum of the machine is calming, though, and she closes her eyes and gives in completely, safe in the knowledge no harm will ever befall her. Not here. Not while he’s there, with her. She’d never trust anyone else with this, and it’s fortunate that, once again, their life paths converged so beautifully.

Almost like it’s meant to be.

Sansa doesn’t believe in fairytales, though. Not anymore.

His hands feel impossibly gentle when he wipes the blood off her back.

It’s a little ritual, these encounters, their respite, she thinks, as he works upon her back. Nobody knows she’s here; she’s become adept at hiding, more so than Arya would ever believe her capable of. Sansa has long since learned the power of secrets, and this is one of hers, much as the truth of her time with Ramsay and Joffrey.

Sandor hums as he works, something that surprised her the first time he did. Who would guess he liked to hum and sing as he works, gracelessly though it might be? It never bothers her, though. It’s another thing she finds endearing about him. Like a lot of other things, a collection of quirks and traits that made him burrow into her heart, permanently.

“Little bird?”

She’s fallen asleep under his spell. Again.

“We’re done,” he says and she can feel the smile on his voice, even before she finds it on his lips. He’s so different around her, in this secret world of their own. As she rolls back onto her front, unselfconscious of her own nudity, she can feel his eyes on her — on her breasts for a second before they meet her eyes. She doesn’t mind it; she knows he’s attracted to her. He’s never acted on it, and she knows he never will, not without her permission.

Yes, she could’ve worn one of those backless hospital gowns, he has plenty of those. Even a towel. But she hasn’t, not since this particular work began and she refused them, and she sees no reason to do so. If she’s honest with herself, and she always is, sometimes she wonders what it would be like if he did. If those calloused hands touched her naked nipples, what those lips of his would feel like, there. Maybe that’s why she refused his offers to preserve her modesty. Maybe it’s mean of her to tempt him so.

Oh well. What is done, is done.

He takes her hand, her gallant knight, and leads her to the mirror, where she turns her back, looking over her shoulder at her back.

Ice was the great-sword of the Starks, made of Valyrian steel and kept in the family for almost nine thousand years. It still sat over their mantelpiece, reforged and reconstructed, the pride and joy of Westeros’s oldest living family.

Sandor had never seen it, but she’d taken enough pictures of it for him, and so it was Ice that graced her spine now, down from between her shoulder-blades and stopping just above her coccyx. Done in shades of black, white and gray, the sword felt almost lifelike, the blade lethal right against her spine, cutting through and overlapping her scars. Joffrey enjoyed cutting her and beating her with his own family sword, a replica of Widow’s Wail, the one once forged from the broken pieces of Ice. It felt only natural to cut through the scars he left on her with her own ancestral sword.

But more than that, she stood in awe of the bird twined around the sword. Sandor’s own idea.

Who knew the fearsome Hound was also an excellent tattoo artist?

The phoenix, also done in shades of black and gray, spread its wings from shoulder to shoulder. Its head rested against the pommel of the sword, its tail twined about the blade. The fire around the phoenix, however, is blue and red — fire and ice, just the way she felt herself. Finally done, the tattoo covers her whole back. The scars are almost afterthoughts, hardly seen in the maelstrom of life and colour.

And her eyes well up with tears. The sobs break from her chest so quickly she’s almost surprised by them.

Almost.

His big hands cup her face as she cries, his thumbs brushing under her eyes as they fall shut and her arms twine around him. She knows he understands, that he knows why she cries and cries and cries against his chest.

It’s the first time in a long while that she’s looked at her back and felt beautiful.

And it’s thanks to him.

It’s always thanks to him.

Soon, she wipes her tears and fixes her hair, and she’s back on her cream blouse, tapping the wrinkles off her tailored beige slacks. The wide sunglasses cover the reddishness of her eyes, and she’s once again Ice Princess Sansa Stark, modest and demure and a lady, a mask and a persona she’s constructed bit by bit.

Sansa Stark does not show skin: her skirts are always just below the knees, her back is always covered, as is her belly.

Nobody will ever know about the tattoos that decorate the whole circumference of both thighs, a riot of flowers and thorns and little birds, her dream of spring. Nobody will ever see the wolf’s face and the sun that adorns her belly, her dream of summer. And nobody, as she walks out of his tattoo shop with a smile and a kiss to his burned face, will know about the sword she keeps on her back, the phoenix that burns around the curves of her body, her dream of winter.

Nobody will know about the scars, the pain, the blood, the tears.

Only her.

Only him.

And that’s just the way she wants it.


End file.
